Mixed Race Studies

Multiracial in the Workplace: A New Kind of Discrimination?

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC Fall 2015 Speaker Series presents: “Multiracial in the Workplace: A New Kind of Discrimination?”
University of Pittsburgh
2015-12-10

Tanya Hernandez, Professor of Law
Fordham University

Welcome by:

Larry Davis, Dean, Donald M. Henderson Professor, and Director
Center for Race and Social Problems, University of Pittsburgh

Introduction by:

Jeffrey Shook, Associate Professor
School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh

Watch the video (01:02:59) here.

Review ‘Democracy in Black’ is a bracing call to action for African Americans

The Los Angeles Times
2016-01-21

Kiese Laymon, Professor of English
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (New York: Crown, 2016)

“We laud our democratic virtues to others and represent ourselves to the world as a place of freedom and equality,” Eddie Glaude writes of the U.S. in his unflinching new book, “Democracy in Black,” “all while our way of life makes possible choices that reproduce so much evil, and we don’t see it happening — or worse, we don’t want to know about it.”

Glaude’s “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul” is as narratively unrelenting as it is thematically percussive, calling for black Americans to take dramatic action in our lives, voting booths and on the streets to contend with a “value gap” that has left African Americans behind socially and economically.

On Jan. 13, Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, delivered a boastful State of the Union rooted in American exceptionalism, the importance of political cooperation and predictably, what we have, will, and can do to our enemies with our big American guns. Eight days earlier, Obama had held a press conference during which he cried over the murders of 30 American children and countless others victims of citizens wielding small American guns.

I watched both political spectacles, knowing that while the violent, often racist American weight on President’s Obama’s back has been so terrifyingly heavy, the violent, exceptional American weight that he and all American presidents must abusively wield is heavier. “Democracy in Black,” one of the most imaginative, daring books of the 21st century, effectively argues that this weight — rooted in American exceptionalism — impedes a national reckoning of how the racial “value gap” in our nation sanctions black Americans terror while providing systemic unearned value to white Americans.

The book asks us to reconsider not simply what presidential tears for systemic violence initiated and condoned by our nation might look like, but what can a revolution fueled by politically active black Americans wholly disinterested in presidential tears, speeches or “post-racial” policy actually accomplish. In this way, the book is not just post-Obama; it is post-presidential…

Read the entire review here.

Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

Crown
2016-01-12
288 Pages
6-1/4 x 9-1/4
Hardcover ISBN: 9780804137416
Ebook ISBN: 9780804137423

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies
Princeton University

A powerful polemic on the state of black America that savages the idea of a post-racial society

America’s great promise of equality has always rung hollow in the ears of African Americans. But today the situation has grown even more dire. From the murders of black youth by the police, to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, to the disaster visited upon poor and middle-class black families by the Great Recession, it is clear that black America faces an emergency—at the very moment the election of the first black president has prompted many to believe we’ve solved America’s race problem.

Democracy in Black is Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s impassioned response. Part manifesto, part history, part memoir, it argues that we live in a country founded on a “value gap”—with white lives valued more than others—that still distorts our politics today. Whether discussing why all Americans have racial habits that reinforce inequality, why black politics based on the civil-rights era have reached a dead end, or why only remaking democracy from the ground up can bring real change, Glaude crystallizes the untenable position of black America–and offers thoughts on a better way forward. Forceful in ideas and unsettling in its candor, Democracy In Black is a landmark book on race in America, one that promises to spark wide discussion as we move toward the end of our first black presidency.

Misc.: How to Really Kill Affirmative Action or Why Abigail Fisher Ain’t Rachel Dolezol

The Multiracial Advocate
2016-01-20

Thomas Lopez, President
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)

Abigail Fisher was a mediocre high school student applying to the University of Texas (UT). She couldn’t get in based on her grades and test scores alone so she was put into a pool of students that would be considered for admission based on alternative factors meant to diversify the campus student body. Most of the students admitted from this pool were white like Fisher, but a small number were racial minorities. Any number of factors may have been the basis for a discrimination law suit but Ms. Fisher chose to sue for racial discrimination all the way to the Supreme Court. This has been a tactic tried numerous times to chip away at affirmative action programs, but there is another strategy yet to be tried that would probably kill it for good yet for some reason no one has attempted.

Applications for college are much like the Census in that they provide the opportunity for self-identification. Since the end of Jim Crow in official legislation, the government has been accepting self-identification as the means for collecting racial demographic information more and more. So what is stopping someone from identifying as a racial minority and taking advantage of affirmative action programs? Could someone be sued for racial fraud in this case?…

Read the entire article here.

Oklahoma cop gets life for sex crimes against the poor

USA Today
2016-01-21

Melanie Eversley, Breaking News Reporter

Former officer Daniel Holtzclaw was sentenced to 263 years in prison after he was convicted in December of 18 counts, including first-degree rape.

A former Oklahoma City police officer was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison after his conviction for raping and sexually abusing women in a low-income neighborhood while on the beat.

District Judge Timothy Henderson agreed with an earlier court recommendation and sentenced Daniel Holtzclaw to 263 years in prison for the attacks on black women in a low-income neighborhood between 2013 and 2014. Holtclaw, 29, had been charged with 36 counts.

After a six-week trial, a jury on Dec. 10 found Holtzclaw guilty of 18 counts. The youngest victim was 17 at the time of her attack and testified that the incident took place on her mother’s front porch, according to The Oklahoman.

The judge denied a request for a new trial made by Scott Adams, Holtzclaw’s defense attorney, who maintained that Holtzclaw was denied a fair trial because the prosecution made deliberate violations and misrepresentations in discovery.

The case drew national attention because of the race of the victims. Holtzclaw is half-white and half-Asian…

Read the entire article here.

Brazil’s Federal Universities Approach Racial Quota Implementation Deadline

Truthout
2015-12-30

Marlenee Blas Pedral, Fulbright Fellow
Comissão Fulbright Brasil

In 2016, Brazil’s prestigious federal universities will be required to confirm that fifty percent of their incoming students come from public schools. Furthermore, slots for self-identifying Black, mixed-race and Indigenous students must correspond to the proportion of the local population.

Implemented in accordance with Brazil’s Lei de Cotas (Law of Social Quotas), these measures seek to ensure that Brazil’s public universities reflect the country’s diverse population. The implementation of these measures represents a big leap, but Brazil still faces many hurdles to making its higher education system more democratic.

More than half of the population in Brazil identified in the census as Black or mixed race, yet only 10 percent of this group made it to the university. In response to these high educational gaps, Brazil’s congress voted in 2012 for a plan to implement the Lei de Cotas…

…Challenges in Higher Education

The residual effects of slavery are acute in Brazil, a country where roughly 4 million African people arrived through enslavement, compared to the estimated 400,000 Africans who arrived in the US.

While the US suffered from Jim Crow laws and one-drop rules, Brazil’s aim of branqueamento (whitening) and its push for imaginary “racial democracy” has yielded a different form of racism…

Read the entire article here.

Young Gifted Black

Isthmus
Madison, Wisconsin
2015-05-01

Allison Geyer, Staff Writer

Fiery activist group praised and panned for disruptive protests in name of racial equality

Dozens of protesters with the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition marched on March 19 to a mayoral forum at the Barrymore Theatre, where two white, progressive mayoral candidates were preparing to debate the issues facing the city of Madison. There was no question the city’s racial inequalities would be on the agenda.

Deep disparities are considered by many to be liberal Madison’s secret shame. And the officer-shooting death a few weeks earlier of unarmed biracial teenager Tony Robinson dealt a crushing blow to the city’s already disenfranchised community.

Protesters marched down the aisles of the theater holding a banner declaring “Black Lives Matter.” The rallying cry has emerged nationally in response to what many see as a pattern of systematic state violence against African American citizens that fails to take account of lost lives.

What did they want? “Justice!” When did they want it? “Now!” And if they didn’t get it? “Shut it down!”…

…Young, Gifted and Black is in some ways a misnomer.

The group is certainly youth-oriented — middle school, high school and college-aged students walked out of class to join the numerous marches in the weeks following the Tony Robinson shooting. And many more youth have attended direct action training sessions at UW-Madison. But key organizers of the group range in age from their mid-20s to mid-30s, with members up to 40 and older.

Members are passionate, with a capacity to inspire and mobilize — and to piss certain people off. Many are African American or identify as such, but Asian, Latino and white allies also have a strong presence in the group.

Group leadership is also deliberately feminist and “conspicuously queer,” committed to dismantling patriarchy as well as combating racial inequality. Organizers say these are characteristics that set the movement apart from older iterations of civil rights activism.

But perhaps what unites many of the core members is a shared experience of discrimination that fuels a desire to change what they see as an unjust world…

…Matthew Braunginn’s activist roots go deep — his father, Stephen Braunginn, was president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison and a co-founder of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Braunginn, 29, characterizes previous efforts to combat racial disparity and racism as “lip service” and “half attempts” that didn’t address the root causes of problems plaguing minorities. He graduated from Purdue University and now works for the UW-Madison PEOPLE Project — a college readiness program for minority and low-income students. He joined Young, Gifted and Black to confront institutionalized racism directly.

“Racism is more than just being hateful,” he says, adding that many white people have a “poor understanding” of the minority experience and how implicit biases exist throughout the society.

“It’s almost worse that Madison is liberal,” he adds.

Braunginn is biracial, but he identifies as black. He says his ethnic ambiguity has been a source of stress and confusion — unable to truly “pass” as either black or white, he has struggled with discrimination and uncomfortable questions about his race. He says his identity struggles led him to abuse opioids in his teens and early 20s…

Read the entire article here.

The Race Relations Act at 50: Davina’s story

BBC Radio 5
In Short
2015-12-07

It is 50 years since Britain’s first Race Relations Act was passed, banning racial discrimination in public places.

Davina Looker, an English teacher and blogger from London has spoken to BBC Radio 5 live about her “desperate” search to find an identity, growing up as a child of mixed heritage. Her father Austin moved to the UK from Nigeria in 1988.

“There were struggles growing up mixed race and struggling to find an identity”, she said, adding:

“I remember going on holiday […] and being told certain children didn’t want to play with me because I was black or brown […] or going to church and no one learning my name, referring to me as ‘lighty’ rather than actually getting to know me as a person”.

Davina says she feels that things are improving now there are more mixed race people in the UK, It’s easier to understand when you’ve got people around you going through the exact same thing”.

This clip is originally from Up All Night on Monday 7 December 2015.

Watch the video here.

Plessy v. Ferguson Re-Argument

C-SPAN: Created by Cable
Program ID: 71350-1
1996-04-20

Hosted by Harvard University

Distinguished jurists heard a re-argument of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court case in which the Court found that Louisiana did not discriminate against Homer A. Plessy when it refused to let him sit in the white only section of a passenger train. In this decision, the Court established the legal doctrine of “separate, but equal,” which governed discrimination cases until the 1954 decision of Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The participants had access only to the facts and case law available in 1896 for their arguments. Following the arguments, the “Court” deliberated in public and unanimously reversed its original 6-1 decision.

Watch the video (02:31:49) here.

Rulemaking under way for DNA testing for Hawaiian homelands

The Associated Press
2015-12-28

Jennifer Sinco Kelleher

This Dec. 24, 2015 photo provided by Pat Kahawaiolaa shows Kahawaiolaa taking a selfie at Keaukaha Beach Park in Hilo, Hawaii. He is among those with at least 50 percent Native Hawaiian blood who are eligible for low-cost land leases from the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. The department is proposing a rule that would allow use of DNA evidence as proof of an applicant’s Hawaiian blood quantum. (Pat Kahawaiolaa via AP)

HONOLULU (AP) — When the state deemed Leighton Pang Kee ineligible for one of the most valuable benefits available to Native Hawaiians — land at almost no cost — because he couldn’t show that he was at least 50 percent Hawaiian, he sued.

Pang Kee knew he was, and needed to figure out a way to prove it. According to his lawsuit, his mother was at least 81.25 percent Native Hawaiian, but his birth certificate didn’t list his biological father.

But he knew who his father was. Pang Kee, who was adopted, found his late father’s brother, got a DNA sample that showed there was a 96.35 percent probability that Pang Kee and the man were related, the lawsuit said.

While that initially wasn’t enough for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the agency eventually settled, and has proposed rules that would allow the use of DNA evidence to prove ancestry.

Hawaiians don’t typically fixate on how much Hawaiian blood they have when it comes to asserting ancestral identity.

“A Hawaiian is a Hawaiian is a Hawaiian,” said Michelle Kauhane, president and CEO of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. “Whether they have a drop or more than 50 percent.”

One of the only times blood quantum is relevant is for applying for a homestead lease. Those with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood quantum can apply for a 99-year lease for $1 a year…

This Thursday, Dec. 24, 2015 photo shows houses in the the Hawaiian homestead community of Papakolea in Honolulu.The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has proposed rules that would allow people applying for a homestead lease to use DNA evidence to prove ancestry. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy)

Read the entire article here.